Alistair MacLean - Bear Island

Otto's stocks of liquid cheer were taking a severe beating. It is a medical commonplace that there are those who, under severe stress, resort to the consumption of large quantities of food. Olympus Productions Ltd. harboured none of those. The demand for food was nonexistent, but, in a correspondingly inverse proportion, alcoholic solace was being eagerly sought and the atmosphere in the cabin was powerfully redolent of that of a Glasgow public house when a Scottish soccer team has resoundingly defeated its ancient enemies from across the border. The sixteen people scattered around the cabin-the injured Heyter apart-showed no desire to repair to their cubicles, there was an unacknowledged and wholly illogical tacit assumption that if Judith Haynes could die in her cubicle anyone could. Instead, they sat scattered around in twos and threes, drinking silently or conversing in murmurs, furtive eyes forever moving around the others present, all deepening a cheerless and doom-laden Mr. which stemmed not from Judith Haynes's death but from what might or might not be yet another impending disaster: although it was close on seven now, with the darkness almost total and the snow falling steadily out of the north, Heissman, Goin, and Jungbeck had not yet returned.

Otto, unusually, sat by himself, chewing on a cigar but not drinking: he gave the impression of a man who is wondering what fearsome blow fate now has in store for him. I had talked to him briefly some little time previously and he had given it as his morose and unshakable opinion that all three of them had been drowned: none of them, as he had pointed out, knew the first thing about handling a boat. Even if they managed to survive more than a few minutes in those icy waters, what hope lay for them if they did swim to shore. If they reached a cliff face, their finger would only scrabble uselessly against the smoothly vertical rock until their strength gave out and they slid under: if they managed to scramble ashore at some more accessible point, the icy Mr. would reach through their soaked clothes to their soaked bodies and freeze them to death almost instantly. If they didn't turn up, he said, and now he was sure they wouldn't, he was going to abandon the entire venture and wait for Smithy to bring help and if that didn't come soon he would propose that the entire company strike out for the safety of Tunheim.

The entire company had momentarily fallen silent and Otto, looking across the cabin to where I was standing, gave a painful smile and said, as if in a desperate attempt to lighten the atmosphere: "Come, come, Dr. Marlowe, I see you haven't got a glass."

`No," I said. I don't think it's wise."

Otto looked around the cabin. If he was being harrowed by the contemplation of his rapidly dvAndling stocks he was concealing his grief well.

"The others seem to think it's wise."

"The others don't have to take into account the danger of exposing opened pores to zero temperatures."

"What?" He peered at me. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means that if Heissman, Jungbeck, and Goin aren't back here in a very few minutes I intend to take the fourteen-footer and go to look for them."

"What!" This in a very different tone of voice. Otto hauled himself painfully to his feel? as he always did when he was preparing to appear impressive. "Go to look for them? Are you mad, sir? Look for them, indeed. On a night like this, pitch dark, can't see a hand in front of your nose. No, by God, I've already lost too many people, far too many. I absolutely forbid it."

"Have you taken into account that their engine may have just failed? That they're just drifting helplessly around, freezing to death by the minute while we sit here doing nothing?"

I have and I don't believe it possible. The boat engines were overhauled completely before our departure and I know that Jungbeck is a very competent mechanic. The matter is not to be contemplated."

"I'm going anyway."

"I would remind you that that boat is company property."

"Who's going to stop me taking it?"

Otto spluttered ineffectually, then said: "You realise-"

I realise." I was tired of Otto. "I'm fired."

"You'd better fire me too, then," Conrad said. We all turned to look at him. "I'm going along with him."

I'd have expected no less from Conrad, he, after all, had been the one to initiate the search for Smithy soon after our landing. I didn't try to argue with him. I could see Mary Stuart with her hand on his arm, looking at him in dismay: if she couldn't dissuade him, I wasn't going to bother to try.

"Charles!" Otto was bringing the full weight of his authority to bear.

"I would remind you that you have a contract-"

the contract," Conrad said.

Otto stared at him in disbelief, clamped his lips quite shut, wheeled and headed for his cubicle. With his departure everybody, it seemed, started to speak at the same time. I crossed to where the Count was moodily drinking the inevitable brandy. He looked up and gave me a cheerless smile.

"If you want a third suicidal volunteer, my dear boy…"

"How long have you known Otto Gerran?"

"What's that?" He seemed momentarily at a loss, then quaffed some more brandy. "Thirty-odd years. It's no secret. I knew him well in prewar Vienna. Why do you-"

"You were in the film business then?"

"Yes and no." He smiled in an oddly quizzical fashion. "Again it's on the record. In the halcyon days, my dear fellow, when Count Tadeusz Leswzynski-that's me-was, if not exactly a name to be conjured with, at least a man of considerable means, I was Otto's angel, his first backer."

Again a smile, this time amused. "Why do you think I'm a member of the board?"

"What do you know of the circumstances of Heissman's sudden disappearance from Vienna in I939"

The Count stopped being amused. I said: "So that's not on the record."

I paused to see if he would say anything and when he didn't I went on: "Watch your back, Count."

"My-my back?"

"That part of the anatomy that's so subject to being pierced by sharp objects or rapidly moving blunt ones. Or has it not occurred that the board of Olympus are falling off. their lofty perches like so many stricken birds? One lying dead outside, another lying dead inside and two more at peril or perhaps even perished on the high seas. What makes you think you should be so lucky? Beware the slings and arrows, Tadeusz. And you might tell Neal Divine and Lonnie to beware of the same things, at least while I'm gone. Especially Lonnie-I’d be glad if you made sure he doesn't step outside this cabin in my absence. Very vulnerable things, backs."

The Count sat in silence for some moments, his face not giving any thing away, then he said: "I'm sure I don't know what you're talking about."

I never for a moment thought you would." I tapped the bulky pocket of his anorak. "That's where it should be, not lying about uselessly in your cabin."

"What for heaven's sake?"

"Your 9-mm. Beretta automatic."

I left the Count on this suitably enigmatic note and moved across to where Lonnie was making hay while the sun shone. The hand that held his glass shook with an almost constant tremor and his eyes were glassy but his speech was as intelligible and lucid as ever.

"And once again our medical Lochinvar or was it Launcelot gallops forth to the rescue," Lonnie intoned. I can't tell you, my dear boy, how my heart fills with pride-"

"Stay inside when I'm gone, Lonnie. Don't go beyond that door. Not once. Please. For me."

"Merciful heavens!" Lonnie hiccoughed on a grand scale. "One would think I am in danger."

"You are. Believe me, you are."

"Me? Me?" He was genuinely baffled. "And who would wish ill to poor old harmless Lonnie?"

"You'd be astonished at the people who would wish ill to poor old harmless Lonnie. Dispensing for the moment with your homilies about the innate kindness of human nature, will you promise me, really promise me, that you won't go out tonight?"